Often materials such as mixed plastics or food products need to be fed or filled into machines or materials may need to be extruded out in the form of strips or long shapes. For example, plastics like urethane mixes with fillers that need to be extruded into a round long cylinder then cut into plugs or pieces so as to make corks to seal bottles. Another typical operation would be to take mixed cheese and use the device to extrude this cheese mix out to fill pepper shells or to extrude out mashed potatoes to be portioned out onto meal plates or into potato skins to make the typical dressed or flavored potatoes.
Presently machines exist to take raw feed stock and feed this material out under pressure but they are typically large and complicated using, for example, feed rollers in machines produced by Bpex Hutt, Minke, Baker Perkins, Spooner Vicars or rotary vane pumps such as those produced by Huntmann.
There are typically available augers that contain a helical profile that contains the medium to be moved by acting similar to a nut and bolt where the auger acts as a bolt or round threaded rod and the medium acts as the nut that upon rotation of the threaded rod (or as in this case the auger) the medium will move forward in a fashion similar to the way the nut moves forward on a bolt thread.
These types of augers also typically provide changes in pitches. This is typically a two-step change in pitch, from a coarse pitch to a finer pitch. A coarse pitch having a greater ability to carry larger amounts forward where a fine pitch will carry less medium forward per revolution but do so with an ability to generate a higher pressure.
Simple, single combinations of pitches have been used in the semi-solid food materials processing industry for example. The most common being a coarse pitch at the start of the auger device where medium may enter, then a longer fine pitch often on a separate auger. The coarse pitch is provided in a feed section where materials will enter but may have voids or air pockets in the semi-solid food material. For optimal, operation in food portioning where the medium is moved forward and discharged at a constant rate, it is imperative to not have voids or air pockets in the product. Often this air or void removal is done by coupling the coarse pitch auger to the fine pitch auger, so that where the coarse pitch meets the fine pitch the medium in the coarse pitch auger will tend to slow and stall or slip before entering the fine pitch auger that can only accept materials at a lower feed rate for the revolution speed of the augers. This is where thru this slippage of medium entering the fine pitch portion of the auger air is released and only medium is able to move forward.
There exists a need for improved throughput in a machine with more variables in the use of a conical hopper with a drive motor that simultaneously turns an agitator as well as a feed screw auger to improve throughput with various pitches that avoid slippage and slowdowns of the feed material while providing for the removal of void spaces and increasing portioning accuracy. Further, a need exists for an improved die and cutter assembly that is able to utilize both a cutting wire for use with soft and sticky materials as well as a cutting blade which can be used for stiffer materials.